Depending on what you consider essential, you might want to use the file utility for this, which gives general information on any file. Its primary purpose is to tell you what type of file you have, but it may provide the level of detail you need.

when i run soxi some.mp3 i get no handler for file extension mp3. the same for avi. soxi supports a limited number of audio and video formats: THAT limited, or is there something more to do beside installing them?
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cipricusJan 31 '13 at 16:12

My idea was to add that command to Thunar's custom actions and just run it from context menu no matter the extension. But it had to be run in terminal, so I took a look at this answer. (To open the terminal and keep it open, I created a new profile in gnome-terminal (Edit/Profiles) called "new1", and under Profile preferences/"Title and command" set it "When command exits" to "Hold the terminal open".)

In the end (by trial and error) I came up with this:

gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=new1 -e "avconv -i %f"

which works put in Thunar's custom actions - and should work for any media file.

avprobe and avconv use the same underlying library, and give you the same results, but avconv is the encoder so with this command you also get an error at the end At least one output file must be specified.
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chronitisJan 31 '13 at 14:48

Anyone interested may want to see the chat discussion here. Topics include differences between different terminal apps, and different programs giving more or less desirable output depending on file type.
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Eliah KaganJan 31 '13 at 15:25